Lord Willing and the Creek Don't Rise
by Regina Halliwell
Summary: Zoe/Wade. Short re-write of the last barn scene from season 1 finale "The Big Day" where we see a bit more of Wade and Zoe after rescuing that baby goat. Some verbatim dialogue from episode.


The squall pounded rain down onto them as Zoe and Wade returned to the barn, their borrowed shelter for the afternoon. Wade pet the baby goat, guiding it towards its mother, and then turned away from Zoe, sliding his fingers back to smooth his soaking hair.

Zoe sat quietly on one of the hay bales, feeling sorry for herself and Wade and the mess she had gotten them into here. She pulled out her soaking shirt to straighten it, uncomfortable with it sticking to her skin, and felt it scrape against the cut on her shoulder.

She hissed out a sound of pain, and Wade begrudgingly turned to look at her.

"You okay, doc?" he asked, approaching her with a look of concern.

"Yeah, it's fine, I think the barbed wire just grazed me."

"You got us both into a hell of a mess, that's for damn sure," he grumbled, pulling aside the ripped bloodstained fabric to see the wound.

"How bad is it?" Zoe asked, craning her neck in an attempt to see.

"I'm not the surgeon here, doc. How the hell'm I supposed to know that? It doesn't look too deep but I'd bet barbed wire isn't exactly sanitary."

"I've had a tetanus shot recently, I'll be fine. Just go get my doctor's bag from the car and patch me up. I'll get Brick to look at it when we get back."

"Father of the Bride probably won't want to make a house call on the wedding day," Wade mused.

"I'm touched by your concern." Zoe glanced back at her shoulder again, thinking aloud. "I don't think it'll need stiches, but it may get infected…"

"Whatever, doc. I'll go grab your bag."

"Just be careful, Wade. That bag won't help either of us if a tree falls on you."

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, venturing out into the pouring rain again.

Zoe waited a minute, then made the decision to take her blouse off. She winced briefly as pain seared through her shoulder, and then sighed in relief when the soaked shirt came away.

Rolling it up, Zoe squeegeed the shirt until it seemed slightly drier. It would probably be un-wearable after this anyway, but who knew how long they would be stuck in this barn and Zoe wasn't going to sit there dripping the whole time.

A gush of water flowed out of the blouse, and as Zoe wrung it tighter and tighter, less and less water seemed to drip from the thin fabric. She shook it out, straightening the ripped and wrinkled material.

The barn door slammed open and a flash of lighting shocked the sky behind Wade as wind blew rain into the building with him. The squall was still raging outside, but Wade didn't seem too much worse for the wear. He turned, Zoe's wet doctor bag in his hand, and pulled the barn door closed again, eying the space between the door and the jamb doubtfully.

"Alright, doc," Wade began, walking towards Zoe. He caught sight of her finally, perched on a hay bale, topless but for her bra, and stopped in his tracks.

"I'm drying out my shirt," she offered innocently.

"Sure, Zoe." He looked at her, seemingly unable to move his eyes from her chest. "That's not going to work, though."

He sat her doctor bag down on the bale beside her and then paced away, kicking a bit of straw on the barn floor with his shoe.

"What's not going to work?" she asked, feigning ignorance.

"You think 'cause you're injured and half-naked that everything will just magically fix itself."

Zoe huffed. "Would you just help me with this, please? And then I'll put my shirt back on."

"Fine," he agreed, sitting down next to her as she made room on the hay bale. He could stand looking at her in that bra a bit longer, but when she looked like this he tended to think less with his brain, and he didn't want to give her the satisfaction of getting to him.

She opened up her bag, thumbing through supplies and pulling out antiseptic rinse, vitamin D ointment, some gauze bandage, and medical tape.

"Here." She handed him the antiseptic wash. "Pour a bit of that onto the wound first." Zoe hissed as the liquid hit her skin, the sting like a punishment for her part in today's events.

"Sorry," he said as she flinched her shoulder away from the pain.

"It's fine. Now the ointment, plenty of it over the wound."

"My hands aren't exactly clean, here, doc."

"It's fine," she said. "Just put a bunch of it on one side of the gauze, then, and put that over it."

He nodded his understanding and squeezed the ointment out on to the white gauze, layered several times so the open weave was thicker. He gently eased it onto her skin, matching the ointment up to the wound as he covered it.

Zoe cleared her throat, taking them both out of the moment. In the seconds it was taking him to dress her wound, she realized they were both holding their breath. She let out a sigh. "Now the tape."

"Your back's still pretty wet, and the tape's not really sticking."

"Wipe it off a bit," she said, handing him her now mostly dry blouse.

He was gentle, grazing the thin fabric along her skin all around the gauze bandage, careful to hold it in place but not press too hard. He blew briefly on her skin to dry it further, both of them fully aware of how absurd it was for him to be doing that. When he was sure that her shoulder blade was dry enough for the tape to stick, he handed the shirt back.

Zoe felt his fingers pressing firmly down on the tape, being sure to cover the gauze and get the ends stuck well to her skin. His hand lingered too long on the first piece, just like hers had on his abdomen what seemed like eons ago. She said nothing, unwilling to break this small peace she and Wade had in this moment. He finished sticking the first piece and placed the second, making sure it too stayed in place.

"Here," he said, gesturing to the shirt again.

"What?"

"I'll help you get it back on."

"I can do it," she insisted.

"You don't want to exacerbate the wound," he said in his best doctoral voice. "Exacerbate means make it worse."

Zoe laughed and shook her head. "Fine," she agreed, and handed him back her blouse.

He fingered it momentarily, finding the sleeves and front, and then turned to her. "Arms up," he ordered. "Gently," he advised.

She eyed him playfully. Their tense rapport was mostly behind them, and despite the difficult conversations had in this barn today, she could tell that one more at least was ahead of them.

He deftly placed her hands in the sleeves and eased the top of the blouse up over her head. She grinned up at him as he straightened the blouse over her torso.

"Tied or untied?" he asked, gesturing to the hanging strips of fabric.

Without answering, Zoe commented, "I would never have thought that Wade Kinsella would be as good at dressing women as undressing them."

Wade pulled back, taking her response to mean she didn't need her blouse tied in front. "Not that you'd know, Zoe. As I recall, you've never taken me up on my offer."

"Well, I'm pretty well-versed in undressing myself," she explained. "So I never really thought there was a need."

"Is that so?" he asked, and the look he gave Zoe showed her just how much they both knew that wasn't true.

"I told you, Wade, I'm just not that girl. I don't just sleep with guys. I don't do one-night stands."

"How did you get through medical school without a few quickies in the on-call room? I thought that's how all you doctors did it."

Zoe rolled her eyes. "Grey's Anatomy has really misled people. No, Wade, I had a boyfriend. For years. A boyfriend who broke up with me because I cared more about work than his stupid day."

"You're kidding me," Wade said, standing up and stroking his chin disbelievingly.

"No! We were together for years."

"Zoe, what you're telling me is that you had a years-long 'friends with benefits' situation. Not a boyfriend. If that's what you call having a boyfriend, doc, your standards are way lower than I thought."

Zoe thought about this for a moment. "Huh." She stood up and turned away from him pensively.

"Yeah, 'huh.' Zoe, I'm not saying that I want to marry you. And I'm not saying that this should be a one-time thing. Hell, you want to have sex every night and talk surgery to me every morning, that sounds like a good deal to me. All I'm saying is that there's something here. Something you might think is exclusive to you and Golden Boy, but the fact that I'm available and he's not isn't the only thing I have going for me. And if you got off your high horse for one second you might realize that."

"Huh."

"Anything else in that well-educated brain of yours besides the word 'huh'?"

Zoe turned toward him and crossed her arms again in front of her chest. "I do like fighting with you over electricity," she admitted begrudgingly.

"And I like seeing you in your pajamas at breakfast."

"I like watching you clean out the pond. And your voice doesn't suck."

"Gee, thanks, doc. I don't hate watching you walk around in those teeny tiny skirts and high-ass heels either."

"I don't hate taking those off at the end of the day, after walking around this swampy town."

"I bet I wouldn't mind taking those off either, end of the day or otherwise." The implication hung in his voice as she swallowed heavily.

"I think I could live with that," Zoe said finally, meeting Wade's eyes in expectation.

"Gosh, doc, I never knew you were such a romantic," he joked, his hand sliding to cup her cheek. He kissed her confidently, his hands gentle compared to his eager mouth and tongue.

It was even better than she remembered. That rushed drunken make-out session in his car when she first arrived was most memorable for accidentally playing "Dixie" on his car horn than for anything she might have actually enjoyed from the experience. Then again, she was neck-deep into a box of wine and self-loathing at that point, so it was understandable that she barely remembered much else from that night.

Zoe smiled into his kiss, her hands twining into his wet hair. His one hand stroked her cheek while the other held her to him firmly around the waist. Wade could kiss. The man knew himself well, and the confidence he exuded constantly might have something to do with the fact that Zoe was literally weak in the knees from just a few seconds of kissing him.

"You are really good at that," she said, pulling away with a dazed look in her eyes.

"Not so bad yourself, doc," he admitted. "Especially since you claim to be so out of practice." He winked at her and leaned back in, smirking as he moved to kiss her again.

Their giggles stopped as the barn door opened suddenly, revealing Sheriff Bill and a gray sky.

"Well look at that," Bill observed. "Glad to see you too are okay. Need me to drive you back to Bluebell? If we leave now, we can still make the wedding."

Making an executive decision, Wade smiled and answered the sheriff, "Nah, thanks, we've got it covered. You go on and enjoy the wedding, though, Bill." Shaking his head, the sheriff chuckled and closed the barn door again before walking back to his car.


End file.
